Thoughts about stuff.

Queenship of Mary!

Today is the Queen-ship of Our Blessed Mother. Eight years ago today was the last day of our family pilgrimage to Lourdes.

Leading up to Lourdes, I was looking at a picture of Our Lady crowned as Queen. I understood with my heart and my mind that she was Mother and Advocate…but Queen? Is that making too much of the Blessed Virgin Mary? At the time I marveled over the fact that a humble Jewish girl could now be the Queen of Heaven.

In Lourdes I realized that she was the humblest woman that ever was or ever will be and that she suffered so much. Jesus promised after all, that the first would be last and the last would be first.

Mary is Our Queen as well as Our Mother. The very first time in Sacred Scripture that we witness her royal dignity is in the Gospel of Luke:

He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

The Archangel Gabriel just announced to the Virgin Mary that she is to be Mother of the King. Later Elizabeth calls Her “Mother of my Lord!”

In the Davidic Kingdom (the Books of Kings, Chronicles) there was a position of the Queen Mother (“gebirah” or “great lady”)—that is, the mother of the king is the queen. Solomon had many wives (600?) so–which one is the Queen? He only had one mother of course, so she was the queen. The Queen Mother. This was a motherly role—not only mother to the king but mother of all the people in the Kingdom. They would ask her to present their petitions to the king. In 1 Kings 2:19 we read:

…Bathshe’ba went to King Solomon, to speak to him on behalf of Adoni’jah. And the king rose to meet her, and bowed down to her; then he sat on his throne, and had a seat brought for the king’s mother; and she sat on his right.

Then she said, “I have one small request to make of you; do not refuse me.” And the king said to her, “Make your request, my mother; for I will not refuse you.”

He bowed to his mother and brought out a throne for Her!

If Jesus is the Son of David—if Jesus is King… then Mary is Queen. Mary is our Queen and Mother!

Jesus Christ alone, God and man, is King in the full, proper, and absolute sense of the term. Mary also, in a restricted and only analogous way, shares in the royal dignity as the Mother of Christ who is God, as His associate in the work of Redemption, in His conflict with the enemy, and in His complete victory. From this association with Christ the King, she obtains a height of splendor unequaled in all creation (Pius XII, Encyclical Ad Caeli Reginam, no.25).